true. Menko did not lie this time! She had waited for him there, two
years before, unhappy girl that she was! All that hideous love she had
believed lay buried in Pau as in a tomb.

"Listen, Marsa," continued Menko, suddenly recovering, by a strong effort
of the will, his coolness, "I must see you once again, have one more
opportunity to plead my cause. The letters you wrote to me, those dear
letters which I have covered with my kisses and blistered with my tears,
those letters which I have kept despite your prayers and your commands,
those letters which have been my only consolation--I will bring them to
you to-morrow night. Do you understand me?"

Her great eyes fixed, and her lips trembling horribly, Marsa made no
reply.

"Do you understand me, Marsa?" he repeated, imploring and threatening at
once.

"Yes," she murmured at last.

She paused a moment; then a broken, feverish laugh burst from her lips,
and she continued, with stinging irony:

"Either my letters or myself! It is a bargain pure and simple! Such a
proposition has been made once before--it is historical--you probably
remember it. In that case, the woman killed herself. I shall act
otherwise, believe me!"

There was in her icy tones a threat, which gave pleasure to Michel Menko.
He vaguely divined a danger. "You mean?" he asked.

"I mean, you must never again appear before me. You must go to London, to
America; I don't care where. You must be dead to the one you have
cowardly betrayed. You must burn or keep those letters, it little matters
to me which; but you must still be honorable enough not to use them as a
weapon against me. This interview, which wearies more than it angers me,
must be the last. You must leave me to my sorrows or my joys, without
imagining that you could ever have anything in common with a woman who
despises you. You have crossed the threshold of this house for the last
time. Or, if not--Ah! if not--I swear to you that I have energy enough
and resolution enough to defend myself alone, and alone to punish you! In
your turn, you understand me, I imagine?"

"Certainly," said Michel. "But you are too imprudent, Marsa. I am not a
man to make recoil by speaking of danger. Through the gate, or over the
wall if the gate is barricaded, I shall come to you again, and you will
have to listen to me."

The lip of the Tzigana curled disdainfully.

"I shall not even change the lock of that gate, and besides, the large
gate of the garden